The Wonder of the World
by antepathy
Summary: IDW Wing/Springarm, that Liberation AU where Springarm survives and becomes a Knight of Cybertron. tactile


R  
>IDW Liberation AU<br>Springarm/Wing  
>Tactile<br>For those who might not remember, as I post so rarely, this is the AU where Springarm survives and is taken in by the Knights of Cybertron.

Springarm heard the sharp cry as he walked through the corridor as part of his rounds. Every Knight took turns watching the late hours of the night, moving silently through the corridors, learning the life a building led when everyone else had fallen to recharge.

He hesitated, reading the glyphs on the door. Wing. The sad one, the one from Altihex. The one who never smiled. He chimed, softly.

The door, unlocked by Order rules, slid aside, Wing sitting up on the berth, hands folded tensely between his knees.

"Springarm," Wing acknowledged.

"I heard—"

"I'm sorry," the jet said, hastily. "It was only a memory purge. Nothing else." A wan attempt at a smile. "It's nothing."

Springarm leaned in the doorway. "Do you want to talk about it?"

The pinions on the shoulders slicked. "I'm all right."

"That wasn't what I asked." Springarm stepped in, dropping down before the jet, meeting the gold optics with his own blue ones. He almost reached for the jet's folded hands.

A shrug. "Just…Altihex. What it was."

"I understand." Springarm did reach out, this time, his hand curving over the knotted fingers. Wing twitched, as if wanting to recoil from the touch. "You don't like being touched."

"I-it's nothing."

Springarm smiled. "It's not nothing, either."

"I just…it reminds me of. Of then." Another sickly quirk of the mouthplates. Springarm fought the urge to lean forward, curl his arms around the mech.

"It must be lonely." Mechs were social creatures, all of them.

"I'm all right."

"You keep saying that." He released his grip, shifting his weight to sit on the floor. "I missed my…," he hesitated, then shrugged. "My twin. My lover. For ages, when I came here." It was a transgression, a blasphemy, but disowning that felt like disowning Wheelarch, killing him all over again. He smiled, waiting for Wing's reaction.

"…I'm sorry."

"I'm not. Merely for all the time I lost." He tilted his head. And for the time you're losing, he thought. Time spent unhappy, miserable, was time closed off from the wonder of the world, from life itself.

Wing's gaze fell to his hands, rubbing his thumbs together. "I'm fine," he repeated, numbly, as if knowing the words were meaningless shields, and thrusting them halfheartedly before him anyway.

Springarm nodded, rolling to his feet. Wing wasn't ready. It was all right. "I'm here. If you need me. And I've…been where you are." He leaned forward, tipping Wing's chin up with one hand, laying a gentle, chaste kiss on the helm's heavy crest. He felt the jet recoil, but then the crackling surge of the EM field, sweeping back to life. The gold optics followed him, perplexed, awed, as he left.

[***]

"Yes." Wing barely met his gaze, sidling up after sword practice. The word came out of nowhere, hoarse and raw, pulled from the jet's spark.

Springarm nodded. "I am honored." And he was. He knew what it took to ask. He'd been there himself, as well, wanting to break free, needing help, and finding the first, the hardest obstacle, was asking for it.

The jet stood, quiet, uncertain, his wingpanels ruffling nervously. "How?"

"Where would you be most comfortable?" It was about the jet, after all. Not him. Only what he could give, how he could bring more happiness, remove some pain, from the world. A simple vocation, one  
>he'd always had. But, he found, even through his losses, the only thing that mattered.<p>

"My quarters?"

"All right." Springarm finished swiping oil down his blades, tucking them carefully in his waist-sheaths. He turned, optics drawing the gold gaze. "Let's go."

"Now?" The gold optics flared with alarm, then faded. "Yes. Now." The flattened smile, before he turned, leading the way from the practice room, his shoulders hitched, self-conscious, as though everyone along the way would know what he was doing. Springarm's spark ached, as he followed him, lost in a maze of memory: himself, despairing during his recovery, ghosting through the hallways, only half alive.

Wing turned into his quarters, stopped abruptly, and stood, uncertain, wavering. Waiting.

"What do you want, Wing?" Springarm asked. He could feel the EM fleld shiver against him as he neared.

"I want….I want to be touched again. I want," the optics dimmed, overwhelmed.

"We'll start with that, then," Springarm said, leaning forward, pulling the jet into a tentative kiss. Their mouths met, soft and opulent with emotion: Springarm's with memory, Wing's plush with repressed want. He felt the shiver, before the mouthplates parted, Wing's glossa shy and hungry.

Springarm gave a soft rev, arms moving to curl around the jet, pull him closer, blend their EM fields, feel the sleek armor under his hands.

Wing stiffened, mouth going rigid, a high, sharp squeak escaping his vocalizer. Springarm pulled away, slowly. "Too much?"

A soft nod. "I'm…sorry. I want to." The optics tilted in worry. "I can't."

"Don't apologize." Springarm stepped back, mastering his own desire. "It's progress." And it was. "We can continue another time."

"No." Wing's voice was insistent, a spark struck from steel, before softening. "You…don't have to go. Maybe just…touching."

Springarm nodded, his spark aching for the wounded jet. So many Cybertronians thought that mechs were invulnerable, because they could almost always be repaired. How shortsighted not to see the only injuries that mattered were those that were impossible to see. Knights…knew better. With their very sparks, the memories tangled in their cortexes. The Master had once told him that the hardest fight a Knight faced was to free himself from the black cage of whatever had brought him here. The Knights only seemed to turn away from the world; in truth, they turned only so they could face it head on, with open sparks.

Wing led him, hand shy and nervous in his, over to the berth, pulling him down. Springarm let himself be guided, like a puppet, as the jet wedged himself against the smaller cyclebot's body. Springarm's design kept him from lying on his back—just too much kibble. He eased onto his side, remembering how often Wheelarch had folded against him, two of them weaving their limbs together. This wasn't like that, though the memory tempted him but it was still…good.

"Is this all right?" Wing murmured, tentatively curling an arm over Springarm's torso.

"More than," Springarm answered, daring to wrap his arm around the shoulders, letting his systems hum down into a light recharge. He felt the EM field flare and stabilize against his, as the jet gave a  
>soft, almost contented hum.<p>

Wing lay still, and for a long time, nothing but the trembling, uncomfortable ventilations against Springarm's frame. Finally, the jet asked, softly, "Would you talk to me?"

A smile in the gloom that had gathered as the motion-track lights had faded. "About what?"

"A-anything. Just…words."

Springarm nodded. He understood—Wing needed something to cling to, the sounds of a voice, a thread of a story, something to anchor his mind while his body struggled with the touch. He wondered what the jet was feeling—trapped under Altihex wreckage, perhaps. "All right. Shall I tell you about Wheelarch?"

"If you want."

If he wanted. A slight hitch in his systems: even after all this time, the death hurt, and anything that brought Wheelarch closer to the real, if even for an instant, was a moment to have him again. Not in his arms, not as they used to, but still. It was something real and precious.

"Wheelarch." He sighed. "It wasn't what he looked like: we were twins." A laugh. "But he just seemed…so much more vibrant than I was." He could already feel the jet softening against him. "Let me tell you why we joined the Security Forces…."

[***]

Springarm stood, calmly, letting the smile play over his face, as Wing crossed around behind him. He could feel the gold optics scanning him, too serious. But Wing had suggested it, after that night, long and slow and quiet, folded against each other. He could still remember the earnest voice, murmuring, barely audible, "Maybe I could try to touch you?"

And here he was, stilled, quiet, as Wing circled, as though the very first touch would be symbolic, meaningful, as though it crossed a bridge he wasn't sure went all the way to the other side.

A hand, brushing up his EM field. Not contacting the armor, merely stroking along the plane. Springarm sighed at the eddy of energy. Another hand, still shy, a fingertip tracing the rim of his lower tire. An involuntary shiver—the magnetic drive caused the tire's rim to be exquisitely sensitive. "This," Wing whispered, from behind him. "I like this."

Springarm felt his smile broaden. "Most grounder like wings. It makes sense an aerial would like that."

A soft sound, and then a bolder touch, caressing the tire's interior. Springarm's EM field crackled with charge, and he fought the desire to turn around, take Wing in his arms.

"Offline your optics," Wing murmured.

Springarm half-turned. "Why?"

"Please."

All right. Springarm resettled himself, closing his optic shutters, his world sinking to a darkness bubbling with sensation and emotion.

The hands grew bolder, exploring the tire and its mount, thumbs squeezing at the rubber, before they curved over Springarm's waist. He felt the jet's body behind him, the broad shoulders, sleek chassis bumped against his drive module, the nearness arousing him almost as much as the traveling hands. Something, flat and sleek, against his upper tire, and then the heat of a mouth, nipping at the rubber. Wing's EM licked at him like tendrils of flame, reaching to embrace him, bolder than the jet's own hands. Springarm let himself tip into the touch, signalling his own want, a moan slipping from his vocalizer.

The hands tugged at him. "Down?" A request, mild and shy. Springarm nodded, dropping slowly, carefully, to the ground, reaching out blindly with his hands. He heard a whirr of engines—Wing's arousal firing through his systems.

Hands tugged, stretching out his legs, fingertips exploring his armor, the sensitive pads of his feet, stroking at the mounting of the ankle gyroscopes, sliding up to the hinge of his knee. He shivered, giving a pleasured whimper. Without sight, the touch seemed magnified, each fingertip stirring stardust over his systems, electrons eddying from the touch in elegant swirls.

He imagined he could see Wing's face, the earnest, almost-worried face, mouth parted with want it was too shy to speak. The touches grew more confident, and he could feel the push of Wing's own desire against his EM field, just like the jet, shy but insistent, wanting, but hesitating.

Unlike Wheelarch. Entirely unlike Wheelarch, a quick smile, a flashfire temper, desire as sharp and obvious as a blade.

Charge washed over him, building like a steady tide, lifting him free from his body, even as the touches seemed to reinforce the contours. "Oh," he murmured, and the sound seemed to vibrate in the darkness behind his shuttered optics, glittering against the velvet waves of Wing's touch.

More contact: Wing leaning over him, hands sliding over the hips, and then a hot, electric trail of the jet's glossa along one thigh, the skirling eddy of an ex-vent tickling over his hip.

The moment was too fragile, too precious for words. Springarm let his body speak for him, twisting into the touches, hands clutching at the cool floor, joints quivering with pooled current. It was all that needed to be said—trust and want and acceptance. And as the overload trilled over him, he arched up, shuddering from his core outward, like a trembling leaf, he felt Wing's mouth cover his, swallowing his cry. Springarm's optics flicked wide, staring, abruptly, into the gold of the Altihexian.

He sagged onto the floor, the jet's weight sliding over his frame. His hands came up, almost on reflex, to balance the jet, hands gentle on the arms, knees coming up to cradle the jet's legs between his.

Wing allowed the touches, lifting his head to break the kiss, mouth still parted, languorous with sated desire, his optics shimmering to honey gold, lit from within with the wonder of the world.


End file.
